The Zamboni®, named after it's creator Frank J. Zamboni, is the large apparatus that resurfaces the ice during, before and after the games. In the old days, a scraper would be dragged behind a tractor which was driven on the ice. People would manually shovel away the shavings, squeegee the ice clean, and spray water from a hose to build up new ice. Obviously this took a while and was inefficient. That's when Frank decided to change the world of ice maintenance.

First, the blade 1 shaves the ice surface, flattening it. The horizontal screw conveyors 2 gather the shavings and direct them toward the center of the machine, where it meets the vertical screw conveyor 3. The vertical screw conveyor lifts the shavings and projects them forward into the snow collection tank 4. Later, in a dump-truck style fashion the shavings are dumped out of the Zamboni®. Next, the conditioner 6 squeegees the ice clean using water from the wash water tank 5, removing dirt and other contaminants from the ice. This water is vacuumed up and returned to the wash water tank. Last, fresh, hot water from the fresh water tank is applied over the freshly shaved, vacuumed ice by the towel 7. This steaming hot water bonds with the current ice layers and melts into and over, providing a nice, new, clean and smooth sheet of ice. Sure beats the old way, doesn't it?

Zamboni® is a registered trade mark of Frank J. Zamboni & Co., Inc.